Mountain yellow-legged frogs live in perennial streams in the San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and San Jacinto mountains. They were listed on the U.S. endangered species list in 2002. By 2003, scientists estimated that there were fewer than 200 of the frogs alive.

Conservation biologists started a captive breeding program, and this week Santana and colleagues released 65 of the animals into Indian Creek, a stream at an elevation of 5,500 feet (1,700 meters). Santana told Water Currents that the creek is surrounded by lush greenery, including ferns and azaleas, and bordered by spruce and pine forest.

The creek teems with dragonflies, butterflies, moths, beetles, and other insects. That’s good, according to Santana, because the mountain yellow-legged frog “eats any invertebrate they can get in their mouth.”

He added that, before their decline, the frogs played an important role in controlling insect populations, and that they also served as an important prey item for snakes, birds, and other predators.

About their decline, Santana said scientists aren’t sure of the exact causes, though he suggested the usual suspects of habitat loss, pollution, and the chytrid fungus. Introduced species have also been a problem for the frog, especially brown and rainbow trout, which eat the eggs, tadpoles, and juveniles.

Wildlife officials have been removing invasive species in the frog’s historic range, Santana said, and Indian Creek is free of invaders. The stream is also on land protected by the University of California. Mountain yellow-legged frogs had been seen there as recently as the 1990s, he added. “So we know the habitat is suitable.”

Tiny Transmitters

In a first for the species, several of the released froglets were fitted with tiny radio transmitters, so the scientists can track their movements. The effort is part of ongoing monitoring and research.

Santana has been working on breeding mountain yellow-legged frogs for the past seven years. The ones released this week were hatched in captivity about a year ago.

Santana said there are a few more releases planned for Indian Creek this summer. The team also tested different release methods. One group of the froglets was let out of their cages as soon as they were carried to water’s edge, but some were kept in an acclimation cage in the stream for 30 days first. Another group was kept in a cage for 15 days.

Santana said the goal is seeing if scientists can make the transition to the wild easier on the amphibians, which tend to be sensitive to changes.

Santana added that it took a few years of trial and error before the scientists could successfully breed the frogs in captivity. The key, he said, was inducing them to hibernation by lowering the temperature. Normally, the frogs hibernate during winter by hiding in rock crevasses at the bottom of streams. Unlike most frogs, however, they are primarily active during the day.

In 2011, Santana and team released mountain yellow-legged tadpoles into Indian Creek. A year later, the scientists couldn’t find any trace of them. But after they released the 65 froglets this week, they saw two adult frogs that had grown up from the released tadpoles.

“This was exciting, it indicated this is a well suited site and that our reintroduction efforts are working,” said Santana.

In a statement, the zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research said, “Watched over by a team of federal, state, and private scientists, the mountain yellow-legged frog continues to maintain a perilous toehold in the mountains of Southern California.”

Another view of a mountain yellow-legged froglet with transmitter. Photograph by Ken Bohn, San Diego Zoo Global

Comments

Phillip Morris

Cheney, WA

August 7, 2013, 9:08 pm

I believe he was thinking of the money for the tags and such equipment.

Ima Ryma

June 16, 2013, 4:21 am

I’m a Mountain Yellow-Legged frog.
My home is in Indian Creek.
Brought by humans in travelogue
To try to beat odds, so to speak.
Trout like to eat my kind, and so
Humans have kept the Creek troutless,
And stocked the yum bugs – doncha know!
To make my stay a test success.
Humans did stick upon my rear
A radio that will transmit
All of my movements loud and clear,
Even bowel – I’m such a wit!

If humans hear that I do croak,
Hope it’s me with live sound – no joke!

Eric Mills

Oakland, CA

June 15, 2013, 6:39 pm

One simple step toward native species protection would be to ban the importation of non-native American bullfrogs for human consumption. California annually imports TWO MILLION bullfrogs for the live food markets in various “Chinatowns”: Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, etc. Many of these frogs are bought and illegally released into local waters, where they prey upon and displace our native species. (The markets also import 300,000-400,000 freshwater turtles, all taken from the wild in states East of the Rockies, depleting local populations.)

Worse, the majority of the market frogs are testing positive for the dreaded chytrid fungus (Bd), which is thought to be responsible for the extinctions of some 200 frog and other amphibian species worldwide in recent years.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Urge the CA Dept. of Fish & Wildlife to cease issuing the import permits, as they were instructed to do by the State Fish & Game Commission back in 2010. Write to DFW Director Chuck Bonham, 1416 Ninth Street, Sacramento, CA 95814. (Email – chuck.bonham@wildlife.ca.gov) And cc Resources Secretary John Laird, same address. (Email – secretary@resources.ca.gov.

Also ask the Fish & Game Commission to re-agendize the live food market issue: Same address as above, email – fgc@fgc.ca.gov

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